Once upon a time, ambitions were flying high in Austria.
We considered ourselves not even as the Heart of Europe, but rather the Heart of the World. We seemed to be entitled to that as Vienna was host to spies from all over the world during the Cold War.
As we knew from our past what twists and turns history could take, we consequently made damn sure that the world would never ever forget us - and gave the U.N. this:
Admittedly, it's not the crown of modern architecture.
But it symbolizes that once Austria reached out for the sky (and never quite got there). The World now seems to have forgotten about us. Which has advantages, too: at least Vienna prospers nowaday as it never hassince the breakup of the Austrian monarchy in 1918. This certainly is due to the end of the Cold War.
New buildings are growing right beside this one, the so-called UNO City, and some of them are quite interesting or even beautiful.
As for this one, it's a monument for Austrias role during the Cold War, and always will be. Nowadays, we don't have politics any more. What we've got you might call public relations for practical necessities of the market economy, or more precisely: politics nowadays for us seems to be decisions of the economy promoted by our elected representatives effectively so that we could accept them.
So this is democrazy: demagogoi tell us what to want, and we, gratefully, oblige. Seems at long last we've reached the heights of greek democracy.
